The Crashed Metro-North Train Was My Usual Ride, But That Won't Stop Me From Riding

I'm on that train all the time. The 5:44 out of Grand Central, on the Harlem Line. It's early for me, the train I take when I've worked late the night before, or when I have to take my son to basketball practice, or when my wife is making something special for dinner. I usually have to run, so I'm out of breath when I get on board. I pull out some work or a book, lower myself into one of the squeaky vinyl seats, and get comfortable for the next fifty-nine minutes. My bones settle, and the busy thoughts of the day start to fade. I sit by the aisle toward the front so I can get out easily at my stop. And I always, always sit in the first car.

They don't yet know exactly what happened last night, exactly why the 5:44 ended up colliding with a Jeep that was parked on the tracks around 6:30. They're not sure why flames consumed not only the Jeep but the entire first car of the train—early reports suggest friction may have ignited gas that leaked from the Jeep's tank. The track's thick, electrified third rail was forced up into the first car, slicing through it like some giant talon. One of the politicians on the scene, county executive Rob Astorino, said the inside of that car was "melted," and that he can't believe anyone got out alive.

Five people didn't, apparently all of them passengers in the first car. Some of them must have been some version of me, the same people I see on that train all the time: tired, looking forward to seeing their kids and their wives or husbands, thinking about everything and nothing, knowing dinner will be warm when they get home. Hoping their kid has his basketball shoes on, because by the time the train gets in there won't be much time to get to practice.

The track's thick, electrified third rail sliced through the first car like some giant talon.

Trains are machines we don't think about. Nobody worries when they get on a train the way some people worry when they step aboard an airplane. Trains are the most humdrum form of public transportation—we don't see the driver or much of the engine, we just step into a semi-comfortable room, sit down, and the room starts to move. Trains work. And yet they don't work by some mechanical magic. Even after well over a century of rail travel, nothing's easy. A thousand simple things have to go right on every trip. Signals have to function properly. Lights must illuminate according to their automatic settings. Tracks must be clear. Human beings must operate the giant machines with skill and precision, performing the same tasks night after night, trip after trip, in identical fashion. And even when everything on the train itself is working, the long black-and-white bars at the street crossings must rise and fall at precisely the right moment, giving drivers enough time to stop. And the drivers must then stop.

This crash doesn't mean we should be afraid of railroad travel. But it's a reminder, a horrid one, that humdrum trains are technological and mechanical marvels that operate with little margin for error, and that every time a train arrives at its stop on time it's a tiny miracle. Things can go wrong, fault or no fault. "Sometimes there are just accidents," Governor Andrew Cuomo said today. Regardless of what the National Transportation Safety Board determines, I won't be sitting in the first car anymore, rational or irrational though that may be.

I sit in the first car for two reasons, incidentally. First, it's the quiet car. There is no talking in the quiet car—people actually shhh talkers—and after a long day, an hour's peace is a restorative buffer between the workday and the evening. The second reason is that at my stop, exiting from the first car puts me closest to the parking lot, which gets me to my car a minute or two faster, which means I get home a minute or two sooner. And that means I get another precious minute or two at the dinner table with my children and my wife, in our home, where they've been waiting for me.

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